Releasing our rage in middle age

I wrote a poem about midlife rage. Dare I share it? Yes, I dare. And I must. I was going to write about love this month, but the anger wants out. Here goes …

The rage, the fury, the anger.

The red-hot burning coal, the molten lava.

The urge to grab a baseball bat and smash things to smithereens.

To scream and shout at the top of my lungs.

To shake my head, stomp my feet and fling my arms about.

To roar like a lion protecting its pride.

To breathe out the fire that burns inside.

Anger at the decades of people-pleasing and appeasing.

Rounding my sharp edges, tempering, softening.

Being good, being quiet, being far too nice.

Steadying the ship, not rocking the boat.

Fury at the bullies, narcissists and misogynists.

The not-so-funny jokes at my expense.

At the undermining, sidelining, putting down and patronising.

At the unfairness and the injustice.

The lost chances and myriad losses.

Rage at my silence, self-censorship and hiding.

At the masks I wore and the smiles I forced in the face of scorn and ridicule.

The tears I swallowed and the pain I stifled.

The outrage I turned inwards.

Binge eating, boozing and self-harming.

Restricting, dieting and vomiting.

Working until my eyes ached, working out until my body hurt.

Pushing, punishing, distracting and avoiding.

Staying mute, playing nice, saying Yes.

Suppressing the gutteral Nooooooooo! that rumbled deep inside.

Is anyone else angry?

Is anyone else burning with rage?

Rhetorical questions because I know I’m not alone.

I know you feel it too, or you will if you dare.

For too long, though, we have not dared.

Cowered, afraid, running scared.

What will people think of me, what will they say?

Will I survive if I speak my truth, if I show up as me?

Anger enmeshed with grief, with sadness for all we’ve endured and lost.

A big black ball of it, an oil slick, a seething mass.

Now is the time to spill the darkness.

To let it out.

Get it out.

Make a noise.

Blow off steam, blow your gasket.

No more festering inside.

No more playing nice.

The only question that remains is: how?

This is for you to decide.

Find your way, choose your path.

Shout, scream, smash things up, hit a punch bag, whack a pillow with a baseball bat.

Make a mess, let it be wrong, let it be ugly, let it be a million miles from perfect.

Let it splinter, like broken glass.

Into thousands of pieces with sharp, spiky edges.

It’s time.

Time to care less.

Time to release.

To get the release.

How will you get yours?

If you can relate to my rage, I’d love to hear from you. Leave a 🩷 or comment on this post. And if you’d like to read more of my midlife musings, please subscribe.

[This poem has received some minor edits since it was first published and I’ve made commenting available to all]

The truth is it came from deep inside, where my anger has been bubbling away for too long, perhaps as yours has too.

The anger I smothered and suffocated with sugar, numbed with alcohol, ran from with exercise and avoided through compulsive work, because I learned as a kid that expressing myself, having a voice and protesting about what was going on around me wasn’t safe.

My truth wasn’t welcome, so I shut up, put up and shut down.

I pleased and appeased.

But peri/menopause and some deep therapeutic work is unleashing something.

Releasing my voice, my anger, my power, all the unspoken words and repressed rage.

I hope and pray I can find the courage to let it all out, on the page, in the gym, in the sea and that I can harness it for good - for my growth and for yours, so that we can flourish and thrive and be all we were meant to be in this world.

So that these transitional, transformational years and those that follow are rich with creativity, freedom, self-expression and impact.

So rich and so colourful that the pain lessens and the losses and lost chances shrink into the distance or morph into springboards for brighter things - for awe, wonder, love and laughter and art that touches people’s souls.

No more cramped boxes or small spaces, no more silence or false smiles.

We’re here to make a noise, to share what lies inside.

They say the truth will set us free.

Let’s see, shall we?

The first step, for many of us, is to recognise that the anger is there and has been for a long time.

If, like me, you grew up in a dysfunctional home, around alcoholism or violence or other people’s expressed or suppressed rage, it will have felt unsafe to express your anger.

We became afraid of others’ anger and we became afraid of our own.

Anger was a taboo.

You may, like me, have turned your rage inwards, through various forms of self-harm, self-abandonment and self-sabotage.

As the poem says, it’s time to stop harming ourselves and to let it out.

• Try some angry scribbling or drawing. Think of an incident that enraged you and pour that anger out onto paper. Let the pen break through the page.

• Try writing with your non-dominant hand, summoning your feelings from a moment in time when you stifled your truth and suppressed your anger, maybe when you were six, eight or ten years old. How did you feel? What did you want to say back then? How loudly did you want to yell? Express your outrage. Let it out. Get it down. If you’d like written instructions to support you with this, please comment or reply. I’ll also plan a workshop on this for my paid subscribers.

• Exercise can help to release anger, but try not to punish yourself or hurt yourself in the process. I find that angry swimming helps - moving quickly through the water, ploughing my arms into the sea and kicking my legs ferociously. Dancing and kick-boxing are great too, anything that gets the energy moving.

• Scream or shout out loud, into a pillow, in your car, in an open field. Grab a baseball bat and hit a cushion.

• Book a session in a rage room - a dedicated space where you can smash things up in a safe environment. Apparently, they’re full of menopausal women!

• Find someone you trust, someone who can hear you, and tell them how enraged you are and why. Share until the tears come and you tap into the pain inside. Reach out to me if you’d like my help.

• Share your tips for processing anger in the comments or reply to this post. Let’s support each other to throw off our shackles and break free.

Thank you for being here.

From midlife with love,

Katherine 🩷